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Deleuze Reframed - Damian Sutton, David Martin-Jones - A Guide For The Arts Student (Contemporary Thinkers Reframed) - I. B. Tauris (2008) PDF
Deleuze Reframed - Damian Sutton, David Martin-Jones - A Guide For The Arts Student (Contemporary Thinkers Reframed) - I. B. Tauris (2008) PDF
Deleuze Reframed - Damian Sutton, David Martin-Jones - A Guide For The Arts Student (Contemporary Thinkers Reframed) - I. B. Tauris (2008) PDF
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Damian Sutton
LB. TAU R IS
Be David Martin-Jones
Published in 2008 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British
Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress
Acknowledgements vii
List of illustrations ix
Part One
David Martin-Jones
Damian Sutton
Part Two
David Martin-Jones
Damian Sutton
Parf Three
hybrid-images in cinema
David Martin-Jones
Damian Sutton
Notes 129
Glossary 141
I ndex 145
Acknowledgements
This book i s the product of many fruitful discus sions that we have
had together over many years , as well as discus sions we continue
to have as s cholars of philosophy and visual culture. We have both
been excited and frus trated by Deleuze, and we both continue to
enjoy the cut and thrust of the debate ove r h i s work, and are
genuinely thankful that we were introduced to a philosopher who
could make so many new thoughts ari s e in u s . We are aware that
Deleuze and his work can s eem remote or impenetrable to others ,
however, and thus it is als o from the discussions we have had with
colleagu e s and students that we h ave been able to fo cus out
attenti o n on the extrao rdinary contribution of Deleuze to
philosophy, as well as his contributi on with Felix Guattari. We
have re solved to help others understand what we consider to be
the most important concepts that Deleuze developed, and we hope
that this gui de i s succ e s s ful in introducing new thinkers to
Deleuze and his work. We hope the reader will not stop at this book
but remain thirsty for more by and on Deleuz e , as we do.
There are numerous commentari e s on Deleuze, and many
useful analyses made that help develop his ideas and provide new
methods of understanding. It has been a great privilege to get to
know so m any of tho s e writers from whom we h ave drawn ide a s ,
and who have b ecome welcome friends and colleagues . This guide
would not have been pos sible without the fruitful and challenging
discus s i on s we have had with them, almo st too numerous to
mention. For support, information and inspiration we would like to
give special thanks to Antonio C arlo s Amorim, B ettina Bildhauer,
Philip Drake, Amy Herzog, L aura U. Marks, Bill Marshall, Helen
Monaghan, Soledad Montane z , John Mullarkey, Nicholas Oddy,
Patricia Pisters , Anna Powel l , John R ajchman, Angelo Restivo ,
D avid R o dowi ck and Karen Wen ell. In addition, we would like to
thank the staff in our departments for their supp ort, and especially
the students in our undergra duate and p o s tgraduate classes at
Glasgow School of Art, Northumbria University and the University
of St An drews . In particular, thanks should go to students on the
MA in Film Studies at Northumbria University in 2 0 0 3-4, for
engaging deb ates over recent films such as The Cell. Finally, we
would like to thank the editorial team at LB. Tauris for helping us
develop this guide, and for their advice and support throughout.
List of illustrations
Fig u re 3. The Cell (d. Ta rsem Singh, New Line C inema, 2000)
supplied by the Ronald Grant Archive . 99
What is a rhizome?
In literal term s , the word ' rhizome ' refers to a plant stem that
grows horizontally underground, s ending out roots and shoots.
Many grasses are rhizomati.c, as are any number of common plants
found in our diet s , including asparagu s , ginger and the p otato .
When Deleuze and Guattari used the term in their intro ductory
chapter to A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia
( 1 980), however, they did so to describ e a certain way of thinking .'
The image of roots and shoots emerging from a horizontal stem
encapsulated a manner of thinking that they favoured over the
dominant thought process of Western philos ophy. Dating b a ck to
the ancient Greeks Plato and Aristotle, thi s dominant Western
model is caus a l , hi erarchical, and structured by binaries (one/
many, us/them, m an/woman, etc . ) , and has been the dominant
form of thinking in Western s ociety for s everal thousand years .
Due to its emphasis on cause and effect and the creation of
hierarchies, Deleuze and Guattari comp ared the dominant Western
model of thinking to the tre e . This image refers not only to the
literal shape of a tree (the seed is the cause, the tree the effect) , but
also for instance to the genealogical lineage attributed to
ancestry in the family tree . In a family tree there is an obvious
causal relationship between a single p oint of origin (the father)
and his offspring. Thus the image of the tree expresses how the
dominant model of Western thinking creates a single version of the
truth (one tre e , seemingly living in isolation or, if you like , one
father and one family) , from which the 'Other' is then defined the
space around the tre e , or that which is 'not tree'. Thi s typ e of
binary thinking has a long tradition and i s still dominant today,
although in the late nineteenth c entury the German philos opher
Nietzs che ( 1 844-1 900) began to point the way toward another way
of thinking . Gre a tly influ enced by Nietz s che (Del e u z e wrote
Nietzsche and Philosophy in 1 9 6 2 ) , Deleuze developed the idea of
the rhizome with c o -writer Guattari .
D eleuze and Guattari did not establish rhizomatic thinking
in opp o sition to the dominant We stern mo del. however. It is not
exactly a case of tree versus rhizome. Such a move would have
recreated a b inary opp osition (in thi s case, b etween right and
wrong ways of thinking) . consistent with the dominant Western
model of thought that Deleuze and Guattari were attempting to
rethink. Rather, they felt that we should reconsider how we think.
In a s e n s e , the image of the rhizome was supposed to ' s upplant ' ,
i f you c a n forgive the p u n , the image of the tree . Rather than a n
oppositional model of thought, Deleuze a n d Guattari attempted to
show that the previous model did not provide the whole picture .
This difference is p erhaps easiest to understand if we consider the
image of the tree in the c o ntext of a forest. In the forest there i s
n o single truth, n o singular cause a n d effect, no o n e ' true' tree .
Rather, the forest i s a single entity made u p of numerous trees , or,
numerous 'truths ' . It is also impos sible to posit one origin to a
forest, and not s imply because you c annot tell which tree came
first. Any one tree i s a pro duct of an ass emblage, of water, sunlight
and soil, without which there would be no tree s at all, regardl e s s
o f whether a seed exists or not. To consider a tree i n isolation, then,
i s erroneous , b e c au s e everything i s i n fa ct the product of an
a s s emblage with various different elements , and i s not s imply
attributable to one cause. Everything is, in this s ense, rhizomatic ,
and t o think in t h e manner of the tree i s only t o u s e o n e aspect
of the rhizome .
For Deleuze and Guattari, when thinking we should not always
re duce things to ' one thing and its Others ' , one true way of thinking
and its competitors , but, rather, consi der that every thing always
contains many truth s . For thi s reason they attempted to disc ard
the hierarchical image of thought of the tree as somewhat illuso ry,
and replace it with the horizontal image of the rhi zome. Instead
of tree , rhizome. Instead of one , one as m any. Not one and its
multiple Others , but a singular multiplicity. Like a forest, then,
for Deleuze and Guattari the rhizome 'has neither beginning nor
end, but always a mi ddle (milieu) from which it grows and which
it overspill s ' .'
Some concrete examples can help us understand the broader
ramifications of the rhizome and rhizomatic ways of thinking.
Deleuze and Guattari used the rhizome to des cribe living entities
(pack animal s such as rats and wolves) but a l s o geographi c a l
entities s uch a s b urrow s , 'in all of their functions of shelter,
supply, movement, evasion and breakout' .' In the case of p ack
animals , the moving masses continually form and re-form a single
shape, a fluid entity that i s at once one and many. This i s a clear
examp le of a rhizome - a herd of wild hors e s , a wheeling flock of
birds, etc. The idea of the burrow, however, p rovi des a more
interesting angle from which to consider the rhizome. C onsider
the guerrilla war o f attrition that the Vietnamese Vi etcong fought
against the overwhelmingly superior technology of the US military
in the 1 960s and e arly 1 970s . As p art and p arcel of this s truggle
they utili sed an e l ab orate tunnel sys tem which enabled them to
evade the US military's land and air force s , s tore and move arms
and supplies , build up numbers for ambushes and surprise attacks,
and quickly dis a p p e ar again once overwhelmed. The rhizome as
burrow, then, is a way of describing an underground political
movement, both literally, as in this case, and figuratively. As a
further, figurative example, undergro und prote s t movements
are now also a b l e to gather s trength and support among
geographically disp arate members using the rhizomatic networks
enabled by the Internet. The rhizome, then, has many applications,
one of which is i n the political realm.
Deterritoria lisation/ reterritorialisation
At thi s stage a note of warning i s needed. Whenever we expl ore
thought (or, indeed, anything else) rhizomatically, there is always a
deep ambiguity involved. The rhizome has the potential to produce
great change, or, to u s e a word that Deleuze deployed in A Thousand
Pla teaus, to deterritorialise. There is a l s o a complementary
m ovement that is always involved, however, a force that attempts
to recreate stability and order, to reterri torialise. As a shifting
p attern (be it the rapidly shifting flo cking of birds o r the slow
spread of a forest), the rhizome is constantly creating a new 'line of
flight" that enables it to deterritoriali s e . Along thi s line of flight
i t has the p otenti al to move into (and onto) new territori e s . Lines
of flight are created at the edge of the rhizomatic formation, where
the multi p licity experiences an outs i d e , and tra n s forms and
changes . At thi s border there is a doubl e becoming that changes
both the rhizome and that which it encounters (which is always, in
fa ct, the e dge of another rhizome) . Deleuze and Guattari explain
this pro c e s s using the examp le of a wasp pollinating an orchid:
Rhizomes in context
Finally, it is worth considering the context from which the idea of
the rhizome emerged. In May 1 968 there was an enormous popular
uprising throughout France, beginning with a mass s tudent strike
in Pari s , whi ch was soon joined by workers all over the country.
Not long after thi s , in 1 97 2 , D eleuze and Guattari wrote their first
book together, An ti Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. A
Tho usand Plateaus was originally publi shed as the s e quel to
Anti-Oedipus, and the idea of the rhizome is clearly a development
of ideas found in thi s original text. Anti-Oedip us is a dens e book
that rails against psychoanalysis for attempting to ' cure' non
conforming desires by reducing them to the familial, O e dipal
triangle of ' daddy mummy me ' . ' Deleuze and Guattari consider
psychoanalysts as modern day priests,' charged with placing the
origin, or root, of all psychological issues in the bourgeois family
home. Psychoanalysi s , then, functions by perpetually imposing the
image of thought of the tre e . If you have a s exual 'problem' , this
i s because you did not develop correctly as a child. You did not
develop into a healthy tree because your roots were not given the
proper nourishment as a s apling. In fact, in chapter 2 of A
Tho usand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari return to psychoanalysi s
to reiterate t h i s point in relation to the idea of the rhi zome, which
they introduce in chapter 1 .
In contrast to p s ychoanalysis , and p erhap s as a consequence of
exp eriencing the uprisings of 1 968,' Deleuze and Guattari felt that
humanity had more chance of developing if it looked le s s at the
family as origin, and more at the rhizomatic p atterns of everyday
life in which we are intera ct with others. Humans are p a ck
anima l s , and, although society structures our activiti es through
institutions that are hierarchical (that function as tre e s ) , there is
alway s the p o s s ibility of a rhizomatic gra s s ro ots (1) revolution
emerging from the interaction of people. For this reason they
p referred schiz o analysis to p sycho analysi s , a practice of finding
ours elves by exploring our identities as pack animals or, rather,
as a p a ck of animals . Instead of seeing the unc onscious as a dark
and forbidding place in which desire is buri e d , for Del euze and
Guattari the unc onscious is a place of underground passageways
or rhizomatic burrows through which desire moves like a guerrilla
fighter, ready to spring up when we least exp ect it.
o
Chapte r 1
Thi s chap ter examines the vi deo game as i llu strative of the
rhizome, and the problems of de and reterritorialis ati on that
occur when we try to unders tand the effect of games on garners.
It begins with an analysis of the way many video games are
structured around a process of mapping that implies pos sible de
and reterritoriali s ations within the p articular game world . It then
explores some of the broader ways in which garners are de and
reterritori a li s e d during the p ro c e s s of p l aying. Although the
academic study of the vi deo game is a very recent phenomenon,
numerous attempts have already been made to theorise what video
games mean, and the effects they have on the people who use
them. This s ection thus summarises many of these debate s , noting
their significance in terms of the concept of a pos sible rhizomatic
gamer identity. Finally, the chapter concludes with an analysis of
the first three versions of the controversial game Grand ThejtAuto
( 1 998 1, as an example of the way gaming c an be viewe d as either
a de or reterritori alising of identity.
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gamer c an literally become another p erson for a while . Moreover,
in first and third person shooters it is not uncommon for a m ap
indent als o to appear in the c o mer of the s creen, requiring the
gamer t o maintain a rather s ophisticated visual overview of the
game world, noting the p osition of his/her avatar on the m ain
s creen and on the map in the corner. Here the gamer is further
deterritorialised from his/her own identity, controlling an avatar
that is at once visibly 'here' and 'there ' , at once both T and 'he/she'.
More over, each time we play a vi deo game the experience is
different. As we learn to play games more and more effectively we
transfo rm ourselves , the development of the avatar's progre s s
within the game mirroring the improvement of our skills a s
garners improving o u r knowledge a n d exp ertis e i n the pro c e s s .
Thi s c o u l d b e considered a form of deterritoriali s ation of the
gamer that is built into the computer game . Gonzalo Fras ca, for
instance , argues that some games are less interested in p roviding
the gamer with a s e t goal to reach ( a s first and third person
sho oters generally dol than with enabling the gamer to explore
multiple creative possibilities. Frasca cites SimCity as an example
of this type , a s it has the p otential to b e noticeably different every
time the gamer constructs a new city." In s u ch games there is an
open ended p otential for the gamer to deterritori ali s e his/her
identity. Thi s p o tential is multiplied again in multiplayer game s
such as Quake, The Thing and Half Life: Counter Strike, where
there are more possibiliti e s for new experiences each time the
game is p l ayed, because different players will react differently
both to events in the game world and to the pres ence of each other.
The most p o sitive take on this form of immersion is that it
has the p otential to lib erate garners from their u s ual identity. It :E
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enables them to act in ways they never would normally in reality.
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Viewed in this way, video games are s o cial s afety valve s . They let .2
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people experiment with their identiti e s , imagine ideal identiti e s , :E
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o r simply let off steam by breaking rules a n d destroying things CI
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they would u s ually have to respect. On the other hand, some critics
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of video games see this a s a dangerous illusion that can lead to /5
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s erious anti s o cial b ehaviour. More to the p o int, the i d e a that
garners deterritori alise their identity and b e come other people
when immers e d in the game is easily criticised. For many people
the exp erience may feel no different from that of playing with a
doll or an action figure as a child. Why should we necess arily
believe that, when g aming, we h ave left our own b o di e s and
become Pac Man, Mari o , Lara C roft or Solid Snake? After all,
although frus trating, it i s unusual to feel physical pain when Pac
Man is eaten by Pinky the little pink gho s t.
Damian Sutton
d rum wa s marking time for the politics of the media, which, for
many, h a d until then been c o nfine d to the p ag e s of a c a demic
studies or liberal and radical new s p a p ers . The Internet's
technos o ci ality is not connection (it rides on the back of the
telephone network), even though the study of the Internet is turning
Playing table football i n a Hoxton juice bar, Nathan Barley and three
near-Iookalikes decked out in regulation Carha rt u niforms excitedly
to d eliver six comedic ' webisodes' despite the fact that none of them
The fact that streaming video and 'web i s o d e s ' later b e c ame a
major p art of Internet media content for busines s es and amateurs
alike is perhap s also illustrative of Enzensberger's second concern:
that capital reco gni s e s the power o f new technologies and the
attractivene s s of cultural re sistance, but ' only so as to trap them
and rob them of their explosive force' . 1 2 New cultural formations
created and enhanced by new technologies are not only us eful in
their attractivene s s to youth markets , but any effectiveness can be
dissipated as they are made more mainstream and a bigger part of
wider consumer culture. Businesses, especially thos e appealing
to young people with disp o s able income , are constantly on the
l ookout for new avenues for marketing.
For example, in 200 1 a new type of graffiti began to appear in the
United Kingdom on electric junction boxe s , rubb i s h bins and
boarded up shop s : a black stencilled image of a baby's face, tightly
cropp ed in a four inch square. The appe arance of thi s image
immediately echoed the already wi despread images of Andre the
Giant, the French wrestler. He has become something of a poster boy
of cultural resis tance as the fac e of the ' O b ey Giant' street art
campaign (www. obeygiant. coml . the work of arti st Shepard Fairey.
Indeed, as with the ' Obey Giant' campaign, the b aby p ictures were
accompanied by an amateur website, dedicated to investigating the
phenomenon of the se slightly unsettling images of a b aby a s
' B i g Brother' , a n d mirroring the multiple sites devoted to Fairey
and his work. The now defunct investigative amateur web site
www.whois lupo .com had crude graphics, a weblog and links to
'si ster' site s , one of which was the Jap ane s e site for the auto
manufacturer Volkswagen.
As cultural commentators , s u ch as Need to Know (www.
ntk.netl , quickly pointed out, the ' s treet art' was, in fact, p art of
a teaser c amp aign for Volkswagen's new mo del, the Lup o , which
had at that time just b e e n rel e a s e d in Jap a n . 1 3 The viral
marketing involved mimicking the ways in which word of
mouth, and now new media networking, creates a 'buzz' within
which to l aunch marketing camp aigns . The quick adoption of a
new phenomenon of cultural commentary, s uch as street art, by
adverti sing companies h a s made it difficult fo r the l atter to
maintain its grass roots , p opuli s t image. Even Need to Know
acknowledged the Lupo teaser camp aign a s 'Nathan e s que'. The
episode casts a harsh light on the activities of cultural resistance
group s that appeal to youth markets , exchange art s cho o l
trained personnel a n d enrol followers through t h e consumption
of T shirt s , music and collectibles . The effect can b e seen in the
widespre a d adoption of s o cialist o r communi s t revolutionary
imagery by high street stores that m arket politi c al resis tance as
a commo dity.
New class structu res
While Enzensberger was enthused by the new technologies of
video, what was really imp ortant to him was the connections such
technologies offered. Later theorists, esp ecially tho s e who have
fo cused on the p olitical p otenti al of new medi a , have taken thi s
c riti que in a new directi on. They have acknowledged that what
u l timately deterritoriali s e s is c apital i t s e l f, and i t is the
indep endent control of c apital by the indivi dua l . as a process of
s e lf- determination, that leads to true political emancip ation. This
is the idea that media theorists such as McKenzie Wark have put
forward, p articularly in rel ation to his argument that a new
c l a s s system has developed through new medi a . Where once was
discuss ed a s chism between the labouring c l a s s and the state or
corporate clas s , there now exists a new division between massive
media conglomerates and an ' underclas s ' of s o cial activists as
h ackers . Thi s i s a s ituation created by the new production of
immaterial g o o d s in to day's new media econ omy. The mo dern
worker in the We stern world is less likely to create objects, and
more likely to create knowledge, informati on, concepts, and the
means of c ommunicating them. These might be s ervices offered at
a call centre, or an artwork sold in order to enhance the emotional
response to an office s p a c e . Even if the new We s tern worker
creates things, they are not as important as the immaterial value
that such things accrue. This means that, for Wark, the two new
c l a s s e s that h ave emerged are the hacker class, whi ch ' ari ses out
of the transformation of information into property, in the form of
intellectual property' , and the vectoralist class, which controls 'the
vectors along which information circulates ' . Most imp ortantly,
Wark al s o notes that 'the vectoralist class goes out of its way to
c ourt the hacker class ideologically' . 1 4 Hacking as a practice of
resistance is always on the verge of co option into the mainstream.
Wark is p rofoundly influenced by Michael H ardt and Antonio
Negri , economic philosophers who were thems elves inspired by
D eleuze and Guattari . It is thi s influence that can be traced to
Wark's unders tanding of the vectoralist class . C apital. suggest
Hardt and Ne gri , ' op erates on the plane of immanenc e ' , relying
on the e quival ence of money to bring all values to gether in
' quantifiable, commensurable relations ' . The rh i z om o rp hi c spaces
of the Internet, which allow for the fre e flow o f information a s a
commo dity, create an ideal place for capital to flourish because, as
they make clear, cap ital 'tends toward a smo oth space defined by
unco ded flows, flexibility, continual modulation, and tendential
equalization' . " C apitalism a s a c o m m ercial force needs to
deterritorialise, to create smooth, unhindered space, in order to
reterritorialise and create new money making formati ons .
This can be seen in the example of media conglomerates such as
Sony C orp oration. In 2004, as p art of a consortium, Sony bought
legendary Hollywo o d studio Metro Goldwyn M ayer (MGM) for a
reported $5 billion. This included the rights to the James Bond
franchise, produced by EON Productions , with which it had already
established connections for the last Pierce Brosnan film in the
series , Die A nother Day (2002 ) . The purch a s e of MGM, however,
allowed Sony to fully exploit the franchise for the ' reboot' of B ond
with D aniel C raig in the role for Casino Royale (2006) . The film was
made by C olumbi a Pictures and MGM, b o th now p art of Sony
Pictures Entertainment, who would go on to distribute the DVD.
The music, by David Arnold, would be distributed by Sony's joint
owned subsi diary, S ony BMG. Arnold had p reviously produced his
own interpretation of Bond themes for East West Records, Shaken
and Stirred ( 1 997), before coming into the Sony fold after he had
worked on the Warner Brothers distributed music for previous
Bond films . This me ant that, for Sony, any arti s tic decisions they
made on the film could refer back to the Bond b ack catalogue with
impunity, since there would be no 'rival' comp any or artist with
intellectual property rights . At the s ame time a massive multimedia
camp aign wa s launched, which included silver special edition
models of the S ony Ericsson K800 and K790 Cyb er shot mobile
phones , designed to evoke the vintage Aston Martin DB5 that C raig
drives in the film in homage to p revious Bond incarnation S e an
C o nnery. The Bond 'pro duct' for S o ny was not so much the film
but a notion around which to orient an array of products that
u s e d the fre e fl ow of S ony's internal organis ati on to create a
network of franchi s e opportunitie s linked by the film's web site.
To draw a picture of vectoralism as entirely mainstream, as Wark
tends to do, would be inaccurate , however. The penetration of these
umbrella corporations into 'grass roots ' or cult forms, such as comic
b ooks , means that they are able to successfully tap new emerging
you th m arkets, especially when they s e em to b e in oppos ition to
mainstream modes of authorship. Eileen Meehan had very quickly
noted this in her analy s i s of the Batman ( 1 9 8 9 ) film and
merchandising phenomenon, whereby Warner C ommunications Inc.
were s e en to 'cash in' on the succes s of the graphic novels that
reanimated the sup erhero 's career. In fact, as owners of DC comics
from 1 9 7 1 , Warner i s s u e d the graphic novel The Dark Kn ight
Returns a s p art of their own marketing strategy to create a buzz i n
t h e run up to releasing t h e movie. Warner's inves tment built the
'basic infrastructure' " for future franchising, a model to which
can be added information technology and the Internet. In 2002 Sony
released Spider man, with a major webs ite that acted a s the hub
for a fan network, and allowed them to 'pre s ell' the movie by
encouraging fan art and fan fiction.
What this means is that resistant objects and practices, such
as comic b o ok s , culture j amming, viral art , o r h a ckin g , which
deconstruct capitalism'S old hierarchie s , can therefore be seen to
assist in its new formations . The clearest illustration of this i s the
confu s e d m e s s age of lib ertarianism put forward by Wark, who
campaigns intellectually for an exploited undercla s s , the hackers
who produce intelle ctual p rop erty that will be exploited by
c apitalism's facele s s and soull e s s c orp orations. Wark asks us to
sympathi s e with in divi duals who are unab le to a s s ert their
intellectual prop erty rights in online gaming, who labour within
new 'life ' games such a s Ultima Online to create the world that
Electronic Arts (the game's owner) will exp loit. Wark and other
new media p ro ducers in the hacker classes are really a middle
class of wo rke r s , however; an aspirational new c l a s s that has
managed to ri s e above the conditions of manual toil in order to
become an emp owered p art of the new economy. A s a middle
clas s , tho ugh, they exp l o i t in their own turn the l a b ourers in
China, Mexico and other countries, many of them women, who
manufacture the equipment (the latest P C , the l atest Apple) with
which hackers create the new intellectual property. This is the real
divide between the clas s e s in the new media economy, a global
structure m aintained by the virtual structures of the Internet, in
which capital deterritorialises and reterritorialises the economy.
This is where Deleuz e, Guattari and the politics of connection
come in. For E nzensb erg er, it was important that p o litical
empowerment comes not from the complete deconstruction of the
apparatuses of ideology, but from an effort to realis e the promises
that their technologies make. This involves new connections and
new types of s ocial interaction, and also involves recognising their
power before the state d o e s , b efore capital does . In this s ense it
invo lves s e eing the immanent p ower of the technologies of
connection quickly enough to take control in such a manner that
they can no l onger be c o opted. Thi s is why p roj e cts such as
Wikipedia, for all their factual inaccuracie s , have the great
potential they do. In making the access to information free, or as
free a s the a c c e s s to a comp uter entai l s , they take away the
investment of money and commerce that normally flows in the
free s p a c e of the new connecti ons . All that is l eft is the
connection itself. In thi s way one need only be watchful against
reterritori ali s ation. Wikipedia needs to b e a contested space in
order to prevent it settling into a se dimentary rock of white,
We stern i d e o l ogy, in order to prevent a p articular way of writing
history and re cording knowledge from starting to lead or create
that knowl edge. It needs to be a contested space in order to resist
reterritorialis ation, in order to fulfil one day, p erhaps its
potential to host the knowledge of a truly worldwide community.
Part Two
!
Introduction
What is beco m i n g ?
One o f the sens ations any rea der might exp ect from reading
Deleuze, especially from reading the work with Guattari, i s an
overwhelming sense of restles sness, p a rticularly when i dentity is
concerned. Not only is the issue of identity an urgent one for them
as philosophers , but their style makes it a recurrent subject around
which they orient much of their philo s o p hy. Inde e d , this is s o
becau s e , for D e l e u z e , identity itself i s always in motion: the
identity of the individual subj ect, pre s s ur e d from all s i d e s by
forces that will make him or her, articulate him/her, o rgani s e
him/her; but als o the collective subject, p u s h e d together through
environmental, governmental, o r s ocial forces, or coming together
in a resi stance to the s e . This restles s n e s s creates the s ubj ect
through coalescence, co agulation and co ordination, here moving
swiftly, there moving slowly. Identity i s always in motion, no
matter how rooted it seems or how fixed. Not only that, but all
identifications are in motion, since any fixed s tate of an object is
merely a stage of app arent rest before another change . If we pick
up a c offee mug and look at it, we can have n o doubt that it is a
fixe d o bject in time and space. It i s , in fact, fixed to the extent of
being brittl e . It will smash if we drop it, and its 'es sential ' identity
would be at an end. What we are really lo oking at, however, is a
moment (no matter how long) of apparent rest in the life of its
molecules and atom s . It was once wet clay, formed and shaped,
glazed and fired under pressure. It continues to change, cracks and
fissures forming on its surfa c e , until we b reak it, when it will b e
tossed asi de as rubbish, returning it to the earth. This 'fixed' o bject
in s p a ce is also a fixed o bject i n time (Deleuze c alled thi s an
' o bjectile" ) o nly ina smuch as we i s o l ate it in our minds from the
continual change of the universe .
This p l a c e s D e l eu z e 's phil o s ophy at odds with any other
phil o s o phy that focuses on 'being' and what it is ' t o b e ' . Ins tead,
if i dentit y i s always in motion, it i s always coming into being, a
never ending project of becoming. It is the simple fact of becoming
th at i s b e h ind the creati o n of the rhizome, since the rhi z o m e
exploits and enjoys continual change and connection, rather than
s e eking t o fix or prevent it. Simil a rly, as we shall s ee, it i s this
continual coming into being of all things that is the only thing we
can rely on, the o nly thing that allows us to mark time against the
sheer vas tness of eternity. B ecoming, then, i s perhaps the single
contribution around which all Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy
revolves the keystone of their philos ophy of life itself. For this
last reason, becoming i s b o th a guiding principle for the analysis
of culture , and an ethical call for a different way of being ( o r
b e coming ! ) . The ideas they develop from this central discovery
b e c o ming wom an, b e coming animal, becoming imperceptibl e
have become currency in an array of ethical debates including
femini s m and p o s t femini sm , enviro nmentali s m and p olitical
scien c e . ' This has o c curred through the philos ophy's central
u s efuln e s s as an interpre tive strategy its abili ty to help us
u n d e rstand how hierarchies of i d entity and e s s ence are
constructed and resisted. To appreciate becoming a s a fact of life,
a s tage of critical s elf awarenes s , o r even an ethical response i s to
a p p r e ciate how i dentity its elf is formed through opposition,
alterity and difference.
Deleuze and Guattari note that culture o rgani s e s itself along
principles of 'propo rtionality', in that, within a symbolic structure
where an equivalence of terms is reached, a hierarchy of relations
is created as a ' s erializ atio n o f res emblances with a structuration
o f difference s ' .3 This i s a rationalis ation of culture made in order
to understand it as much by sociologists as by ourselve s . The
problem here is that the p rincipal identity against which thi s
proportionality is measured is man, as the s creen upon which all
identities are p rojected and found different. The ethical p o s ition
that Deleuz e and Guattari take relies upon the realis ation of this
principle of difference, even for thos e who are 'naturally' relegated
to a p o s ition of sub ordination. Deleuze and Guattari replace the
binary structure with one based on a kind of substantial quality :
instead of the binary structure of man woman, for instance, they
suggest that man is the maj o r or molar entity, against which
woman is minor. As with much of Deleuze and Gu attari's
philo sophy, h owever, it is never as simple as that. To truly b egin
to dismantle and rebuild the hierarchies created by culture's
p atriarchy, one has not only to confront and p a s s through the
p o s ition of the minor, but to appreci ate thi s as a becoming ,
rather than e s s ential and fixed. Put another way, in order to
dismantle a p rejudiced system based on s ex, gender or race, one
has to understand from within the things that make differences
different. A woman cannot s imply b e different, she has to pass
through this difference, she has to appreci ate this difference as
being at once symb olic and artificial . Difference has to b e felt as a
construction rather than as an essence. The s ame situation o btains
for any minority, and, indeed, the collective term that Deleuze and
Guattari u s e is becoming minoritarian . The p o s ition becoming
woman take s in this ethic al p ro ces s i s s ignificant, since it is the
p rincipal bin ary organi s ation that culture adopts . Simp l e
oppo sition t o the patriarchal hierarchy is n o t a n option, though;
the ethical p ath is not to be different , but to be imp erceptib l e .
This h a s caused femini st phil o s ophers , s u c h as Rosi Braidotti, to
criticise Deleuze and Guattari for suggesting that women give up
the only weapon they have, the only agency they p o s s e s s , in the
struggle against discriminatio n their femininity.'
Fundamental to Deleuze and Guattari's phil o s ophy, however,
is the fact that i dentity is created not by any kind of essential or
material b eing, but only by re acti ons by others to what are s een as
characteri stics . B ecomings are made up of a variety of these th at
act as markers , or comp ositional elements. Any e s s ential i dentity,
no m atter how different from man, would s imply be another
molar one . True becomings are mol ecular, since they are made up
of elements and chara cteristics that m ay at any time change and
reform. For this re a s o n the notion of contagion and cro s s
contamin ati on becomes e s s enti al to understanding identity as
contingent, to create a sense of s elf awarenes s and empowerment.
When a man turns into a wolf in horror fiction he does not become
just another wolf, he is infected with the characteristics of the wolf
(as we have seen, the wolf is a co nstant pres ence in A Thousand
Platea us) . Simil arly, t h e soldier w h o dres ses a s a woman i n o rder
to escap e , or even in order to entertain other s o l diers, does not
imitate a woman, nor b ecome a woman, b ut unders tands
suddenly the struggle that women fa ce when reduced to their
ess ential characteristics .
It help s , here, if we use an example that illustrates not just
M i no r c i n emas
� the s e clas sical cinemas it is taken as read that the p eople of the
� United States , or the Soviet people, already exist. For the filmmaker
it i s s imply a question of shaping the identity of that p eople. In
C apra's cinema this is often done by evoking the righteousness of
democrati c, small town family values in the Unite d States or, in
Eis enstein, the revolutionary potenti al of the proletari at in the
Soviet Union. In the works of the directors of modem political
cinema, however, the p eople do not exist in a readily acces sible
ma s s . Rather, the s e films show the people s truggling to emerge
under political conditions that would deny their different identities.
S e con dly, D eleuze discu s s e s the eradication of the divi sion
between public and p rivate spaces in modem p olitical cinema,
noting how this makes all personal actions inherently p olitical.
Protagonists in these cinemas do not have the luxury of a s ecure,
distinctive space of the family. Rather, characters often inhabit the
'cramp e d s p ac e s ' of s o ciety's margin s , spaces that are too easily
invaded by the official forces of the public realm. iO For this reason
it is not p o s sible for minor characters to transfer a certain set of
value s learned in the home to their public live s , as private acts
quickly become public acts due to the monitoring of the lives of
minor characters by the controlling forces o f s o ciety.
For a concrete filmic example of this type of existence, consider
the French film La Raine ( 1 9 9 5 ) . Set in the Pari sian banlieue (the
run down housing proj ects on the outskirts of Paris) . La Raine
follows the adventure s of three unemp l oyed teenagers , Vinz
(Vin cent C a s s ell) , Hub ert (Hub ert Kounde) . and SaId (S aId
Taghm a o u i ) . With France's manufacturing indus try in decline,
the male p opulation of the banlieue finds itself redun dant, and
violent clashes with the police soon follow. The three post colonial
youths find their cramped home lives cons tantly invaded and
monitored by the p o lice and the media. Practic ally every action
they take therefore has a political edge, as is seen most clearly in
the desire of Vinz to take revenge for the murder of their friend at
the hands of the riot police. Under such circumstances, whenever
and however the individual acts , he or s h e makes a p olitical
statement that resonates within the public sphere. Although this
is a rather negative s ituation to exi s t in, it a l s o contains the
potenti al for minor actions to imp act directly upon society.
Finally, Deleuze argues that modern political cinema is marked
by a refu s a l either to repro duce negative stereotyp e s , or to
oppo s e such typ es with 'positive ' stereotype s . For D eleuze, either
practice creates a colonising (or in s ome c a s e s a neo colonising)
image of the people. Rather than enabling the creation of a new
people, this practice fixes one image of the p eople in place,
thereby halting their transformation into s om ething els e in the
future. Instead, mo dern political cinema multiplies characters ,
to illustrate how the identity of the p eople to come will never
stop transfo rming. As p art and p arcel of thi s proces s , directors
of mo dern p olitical cinema often b ase stori es around characters
involve d in creating s tories of their own identity. In this way
the films thems elves refu s e to establish one singl e , authori al
p oint of vi ew. After all, to posit one authoritarian view on a
p o l itical s i tuation is not a minor action, it is an o p p o sition.
Instea d , minor films o ften enter into a dialogue over which
fiction (that of the film, o r the stories told within the film) c an
best estab l i sh a new i dentity for a people yet to come. For this
r e a s o n minor cinema can at times appear self c onsciously
s tyl i s e d . D i r e c tors of minor film do n o t create a s o l i d image of
a new identity s o much a s question the manner in which
i dentities are usually constructed in mains tre am cinema. In this
way, the m ajor voice of cinema b e gins to stutter, stammer or
wail, with o ut to o quickly reterritori alising ' the p e o p l e ' into a
new stere o typ e .
Neverth ele s s Deleu z e 's theory o f m o d e rn po litical cinema is
in many ways quite vague. He never really gives concrete examples
of exactly how it takes the dominant language of classical cinema
and makes it speak in a minor voic e . His ideas are practic ally
imp o s s ible to grasp unless you have s een the films he briefly
reference s , and even then his lack of sustained concrete
analysis erects further b arriers to our understanding. Fortunately,
several schol ars have taken his i d e a s and applied them with
rig our to vari ous cinemas. Let us now turn to a few of them
to enhance our unders tanding of m o d ern p o liti c a l cinem a , o r,
minor cinema.
M i nor cinema
Probably the first person to coin the phra s e 'minor cinema ' in
English was D. N. R o dowick, in Gilles Deleuze 's Time Machine
( 1 9 9 7 ) . 1 1 R o d owick d i s cu s s e d how p o st col onial west Afric an
nations, such as Senegal in the 1 9 6 0 s , used cinema to rethink
their identity after an extensive period of occup ation by the French.
Previously, cinema h a d b een used by the French to repres ent the
native west Africans . French cinema was a m ajor voice that very
often rep res ented west African identity in a negative m anner, as
a primitive culture. For this reason west African filmmakers had to
struggle against not only the dominant language of the colonis er,
French, its elf, but also French cinema when it p o sitioned west
African people as colonial subjects.
Rodowick analys es Ousmane Sembene's Borom Sarret ( 1 963) as
a work of minor cinem a . " O ften consi dered the first indigenous
African film, Borom Sarret is the story of a taxi driver (with a horse
drawn cart) from a poor dis trict of Dakar, the capital of Sene g a l .
Ro dowick comments in p articular on Sembene 's utilis ation of
African oral storytelling traditions to make a minor use of the norms
of Western cinematic representation. R odowick demonstrates how
the sound recording of the film gives it the feel of a story told
verbally, as though in the African oral tradition. The s ound is
deliberately non naturalistic (Le. it does not always match the
image) , and many of the characters ' voices are spoken by Sembene ..
tI
himself. This has a peculiar effect on the spectator, who is used to E
Q)
seeing images constructed to appear 'naturali stic ' , or as though c:
'13
they obj ectively reflect reality. In the case of French cinema's o
c:
previous representation of west Africans , this naturalism was used :E
..
as a disguis e b ehind which to propagate the negative image of II
1 . Mysterious
Skin (2004).
Thus Araki 's qu eer p o liti c s deterritorialises the heterosexual
coupling typ ical of the us teen film .
I f there i s a people yet t o come in this film it i s clear that i t
will have t o emerge from the wounded teens who have spent their
lives having their expectations of what life ' should' b e like (which
they have learned from the movies) dashed by reality. Thus Wendy
often performs the role of caring mother to Neil , and Neil and Eric
take turn s caring for the traumati s e d Brian. Unlike the teens in
typical teen movies there is no romantic resolution for any of these
characters. Instead , they all learn to face the uncertain future and
to try and support each other. The c asting of Jos eph Gordon Levitt
as the teen hustler Neil is key in this respect, as he is well known
for playing wholesome hetero teens who do get the girl in b oth the
TV s erie s Third Rock from the Sun ( 1 9 96 2 00 1 ) and the teen flick
10 Things I Hate About You ( 1 99 9 ) . Audience expectations are
rocked by his p e rform a n c e , a s Araki p l ays out our normal
exp e ctati ons in a minor key, forcing us to co nfront the
p o s s ibility that the normative representation that we are u s e d to
may require deterritorialising if a new identity i s to be created.
Indeed, it was undoubtedly this uncharacteristic performance that
enabled Gordon Levitt to cro s s over into the US independent
s e ctor and then s e cure the lead in the teen noir Brick (2006).
The second criterion for a work of minor cinema is also met, a s
t h e film eradicates the b o undary b etween political and private
spaces. As a hustler, Neil inhabits marginal space s , such as motel
rooms , cars , bus terminal toil ets and the chil dren's playground
where he waits for client s . Through Neil's illicit sexual a ctivities
we witn e s s a life live d aimle s s ly in p ublic p l a c e s . In fact, it
transpires that Neil 's relationship with the private sphere was
a dversely affected when he was a chi l d . His first ej aculation
o ccurred when he was just a small boy, watching his mother give
her latest boyfriend a blow job on the la dder of his garden swing
set. Here the public sphere inva ded his childhood s anctuary, and
it is no accident that, as a teenage hustler Neil hangs around a
public children's playground ( c o mplete with swings and slide) .
waiting for clients. Public and p rivate have b ecome one and the
same for Neil, who associates sex with symbols of childhood that
for him have lost their usual connotations of innocent play. In
fact, as his mother is fre quently drunk or absent, Neil effectively
functions without the p rivacy of a secure home. For this reason
he falls for the co ach, who stocks his house with foo d and games
appealing to young chil dren, and generally p erforms the role of
Neil's ab s ent father by giving him l ifts home after b a s eb all
practice. The invasion of sex into Neil's fractured home life , and
the false security offered by the co ach's house (where his surrogate
father sexually abus es him) , have destroyed Neil's access to a
private life , and as a teenager he lives his life entirely in public
s p a c e s . The sanctuary of white suburbia usu ally uph e l d by
Hollywoo d (again, think no further than It 's a Wonderful Life) is
here shown to b e a lie. ..
o
Fulfilling the third criterion of a work of minor cinema , Araki's E
QI
s elf c onscious cinematic style is u s e d to ins ert the film into a c:
·13
dialogue between filmmaker, fictional story and audience, in a o
c:
similar manner to that which Ro dowick describes in Semb ene's :§
Borom Sarret. In doing so he avoids the creation of new, 'positive'
queer stereotypes, preferring instead to proliferate the possibilities
of divers e teenage identities. Part and p arcel of this approach is
a self conscious exploration of style.
As numerous critics have noted, Araki's films stand out from
the mainstream due to his incorporation of asp ects of the avant
garde . l5 As opposed to the transp arency of fo rm adopted by
Hollywo o d (which attempts to suck the viewer into its fictional
world and avoids drawing attentio n to its constructed nature at
all costs) . the avant garde foregrounds the fictional status of the
film, asking the viewer to think about how the world is 'normally '
repre sented to them by film. In Mysterious Skin the effect of
distancing the spectator from the story is achieve d by stylistic ally
inhabiting the Hollywo o d norm and using it to tell a story that
questions the u s ual s exual identity of the Hollywood teen film,
while self cons c iously referencing previous famous Hollywo o d
productions ab o ut small town life. I n this way Mysterious Skin
appears as though a story told in cinematic quotation mark s . The
viewer is confronted with numerou s images that seem familiar, but
have b een ' queered' to such an extent that they can only question
our p erception of what i s normal.
E arly on in the film Wendy and Neil stand in a d e s erted
drive in, and fant a s i s e about how their lives might look if they
were in a film. As they listen to the 'voice of God' through the
sp eaker it b egins to snow. Neil and Wendy look up to the heavens .
A revers e shot then follows , taken from a crane l o oking directly
down on them, s howing them looking up as the snow fall s . This
i s in fac t a direct cinematic reference to the op ening of Frank
C apra's tale of s mall town American life, It 's a Wonderful Life. In
the earlier film a shot/reverse shot s e quence is u s e d to create a
dialogue b etween a family praying for their father George B ailey
(Jam e s Stewart) in the s mall American town of B e dford Fall s and
an answering d i s cus sion between angels in heave n . " We literally
fo llow the p r ayers a s they fly t o h e aven , and witne s s a
convers ation b etween angels as they decide how to respond. In
Mysterio us Skin, however, a shot of the heavens s een from the
p oint of view of the characters on e arth is a b s ent. Even though
the characters claim to hear the voice of God from the silent
drive in movie s p eakers , their view of heaven i s not shown to the
s p ectator, and there i s no convers ation between protective angels .
In fact, a s the impassive camera's aerial stare suggests , heaven has
abandoned the s e characters , just a s both Neil and Brian's fathers
have ab andoned them to the care of their working mothers . The
effe c t of thi s s e eming renunci ation of all p atriarchal values ,
whether religious or familial, is c o mp ounded when teenage Neil
gets drunk one night and visits the coach's old house. C onfronting
this closed door to the past, he mutters bitterly that the co ach, his
s urrogate father figure, had once referred to him as his 'angel ' . The
film uses the notion of abandoned souls to suggest that, for Wendy
and Neil, the heavenly redemption available to George Bailey in the
small American town of Bedford Falls in It 's a Wonderful L ife is
not available. Their identity i s no longer that o f the whol e s ome,
' s aved' America of the immediate p ost war years .
Thi s replaying of Hollyw o o d myths in a minor way o c curs
several times in the film. When Neil and Wendy are in New York ,
Wendy warns Neil to be c areful by referencing Dorothy in The
Wizard of Oz ( 1 9 3 9 ) , s aying: 'We 're not in Kansas anymore . ' This
time, however, unlike Doro thy, the s e characters have no utopian
family home to return to by clicking their heel s . More obviously,
during the film's Halloween s e quence the s afe sub urb an
excitement of H alloween seen in Hollyw o o d classics of the past
such a s Meet Me in St. Louis ( 1 944) and E. T. : The Extra Terrestrial
( 1 982) is made to s tutter when Neil physically and s exually abuses
a disabled boy in the manner he has learned from the coach, and ..
o
when B ri an is once again sexually abus ed by the coach. E
II
Finally, Araki's decision to shoot the scenes of child abuse in a C
'0
manner that did not traumati s e the child actors creates a further o
c
minor effect. For the abu s e s e quences Araki filmed the chil dren :E
and the coach sep arately, as though they were rea cting to each ..,
-0
Becom i n g a rt
Damian Sutton
:g cane that he holds in his hand. This is one of the last photographs
that the a rti s t Rob ert Mapplethorp e took of hims elf before his
death, and it s eems to repres ent the intersection of a body of work
with the b o dy of the artis t hims elf, as the art world s ought to
create the arti s t who was Mappl ethorp e.
This Ameri c an artist/photographer p a s s e d away fro m an
AIDS /HIV-related infection in March 1 9 8 9 . At the time, a major
retro spective of Mapplethorpe's work, The Perfect Moment, was
on a tour of the United States that was to include Philadelphia,
B o ston, Hartford and Washington D C . The work included still life
photographs of flowers and s tatues and images of the bodybuilder
Lisa Lyons , as well a s many of his s elf portraits . The exhibition
al s o included the 'x' p ortfoli o , a s eri e s of images of g ay
s adomasochism, the 'Y' portfolio of flowers , and the '2' portfolio
of black male nudes . Finally, the exhibit included images of the
children of Mapplethorp e's fri ends. His photography represented
exp erimental and oppositional sexuality, in direct confrontation
with the a c a d e my, and in the tra dition of nineteenth century
painters G u s tave C o urbet and E d o u ard Manet, who h a d
confronted the s exualised g a z e of art in their own time. A t the
same time, the aesthetic strictnes s of Mapplethorpe's approach
tightly comp o s e d , clas sical, highly fini shed photographic prints
demons trated what Kobena Mercer has called a 'fundamental
cons ervati s m ' , implicating him in the very culture of sexual
obje ctifi c a t i o n he seemed to rej e c t . ' The s e lf p o rtrait o f
Mappletho rpe therefo re s e ems a l s o to embody thi s kind o f
dicho tomy : t h e more h e s e e m s to o p p o s e the mainstream,
hetero sexual and cons ervative ideas of art, the more his
oppo sition help s substantiate the mainstream. This is app arent
in the circums tances s urro unding The Perfect Mo ment, and
1:
the aftermath o f Mapplethorp e's death circumstance s that a
0>
reterritorialis e the queer look of his photography. c
the p articular time and place of the artworks , in inters ection with
the specifi c histories of maker or context, that give the art its
i denti ty. Artworks , then, are the constructions of much l arger
forces than one single artis t or even one historical trajectory, and
so we need a way of unders tanding them that expre s s e s this
larger agglomerati on. Deleuze and Guattari, for instance, pick out
in their own work key artists who work with a medium to produce
crucial effects Paul Klee, Was s ily Kandinsky and C l aude Monet
with c o lour, for example yet in fact their philos ophy of art s uits
skilful and articul ate individual. but it is all too easy to adopt a
molar p o siti o n . In fact, the artist's role is one of a s s emblage, or
of putting things together: ' C ompo sition, comp osition is the sole
definition o f art. C omp o s ition is a e s theti c , and what i s not
comp o s e d i s not a work of art. ' 1 4 The first p o s ition seems fixed in
affects exi s t before articulation, yet they are what we describe and
share through the exchange of l anguage and ideas ; they are what
we cling to create our own identity ('We are not in the world, we
become with the world; we b ecome by contemplating it. ' !') even
though they are s omehow indep endent of us .
The artist may make decisions , may deal with the forces and
materials (percepts) , but the inters ection with sens ation (affects)
may never occur or, most importantly, may o ccur in s pite of the
arti st's efforts . Artworks rely upon the conjunctio n of percept
and affect, when the material ' p a s s e s into sensatio n ' , and until
then they are just cliches o r ruminations of the materi a l . ! · Arti s t s
therefore a r e given s omething of a choice, a n d their subsequent
curi os ity i s what they b ring to the conversation. They can work
with the materi a l s and l e t the inters ection o c c u r in its own
as Michel de C erteau. ! 9 For the arti st, the social situation becomes
2. Rachel Whiteread ,
House ( 1 993).
an e s s ential p art of the practice of art, including the p o litical or
everyd ay lives of the arti st, the gallery and the s tudi o , the lecture
hall and the bar. The artis t i s a s o cial engineer, trying to foster the
situation that will create the event that will in tum produce what
Bourri aud calls a 'lasting' artwork . 20 Influenced by Deleuze and
work ' , and the relations 'between people and world' ." This places
second, however, the movement of materials , the practice its elf,
the case with Whiteread's other work s , such as ' Ghost' (I 990) , the
cast of a sitting room. This meant that the sculpture had the s ame
effect a s a photograph o r home movie, in that viewers were given
the s e n s ation of d i z z ying memory from an almo s t literal
transfiguration of the p ast onto a s olid obj e ct. The cast rooms
expressed the movements of all the people who have lived in such
house s , following and p robing the occup ation of space simply by
filling it up. To touch the c oncrete was to touch the impression left
by the hands of children , adults, workmen, builders, and to touch
the traces l eft from l overs sitting on the window ledge, letters
upon the spectator, viewer, critic and maker, in that they reveal the
p l ane of o rgani s ation (the movement of materials) . What they are
normally see in the movement of materi als. This is when the arti s t
c o m e s c l o s e s t to the p r oj e c t of the philosoph er. Ju st a s the
time and space that had been literally ins crib e d by occupations ,
by life its elf. This is art that is m o numental , figuratively and
though i t has been torn down like the houses around it. Indeed,
that i s the p o int of h i s torical irony, whereby truths remain to be
reve ale d , rep eated o r mirrored. Time will tell whether 'House'
has the real m onumentality of an artwork; not the simple
monumentality of s cale but that of confiding to the future. The
fact that some artworks remain current, no matter how hoary o r
' lived in' they s e e m , i s b ec au se they a r e s till c onfi ding in the
future, or perhap s they hold a truth still waiting to b e heard.
Such artworks are monumental in the s ame way that a village war
memori al or a city's H o l o c a u s t memorial i s monumenta l : not
because they are large but because they reveal the enormity of a
parti cul ar truth that will continue to be current .
P art Three
Introduction
What is d u rati o n ?
It would b e fair t o say that we all have a p retty good idea what
time is. For most of us, time i s the way we measure the passing of
our live s . Our everyday life is measured in temporal cycles. There
and set about overc omplic ating matters for the s ake of it, it is
worth b earing i n mind that D eleuz e's conclusions were drawn
from his observation of the way cinema rep resented time after
Wo rl d War II. Deleuze was not arguing that our usual perception
of time was 'wrong' but, rather, that certain films were suggesting
another way of thinking about time that had huge ramifications
for, among other thing s , the way in which we i m a gine our
everyday i dentiti e s .
Bergson a n d Deleuze
B ergson believed that time was a virtual and ever-expanding whole
that he c alled ' duration' . The major works that defined thi s concept
were Time and Free Will ( 1 889), Matter and Memory ( 1 896),
Creative Evolution ( 1 907), a n d Duration and Simultaneity ( 1 92 1 ) . '
B ergs o n's philo s ophy i s b ro a d ranging and extremely complex,
making it difficult to examine any one of his ideas without op ening
the imp act of his ideas can b e seen in the writings of various
authors from around the worl d , the most prominent of whom
vari ous new media (e.g. the Internet and computer games) . For
instance , during a flashb a ck in film, television or even a video
game, the viewer or gamer i s transp orted into the virtual past of
the narrative , often as we shall see further in Part Three in a
Bergsonian manner.
Let us p rovi de some more depth to B ergson's view of time .
Bergson theorised that the virtual p a s t was ever exp anding. At
each moment in time there was a divi s ion of time into what
Deleuze would later c o m e to call ' a present which is p a s sing and
a p a s t that is p res erve d ' . ' The present moment is exp eri enced by
the p a s t interrupts our daily life unb idden, for instance when
invo luntary memory ' fl a s h e s ' us b ac k to the p a s t , it i s often
b e c au s e our a ctual p res ent ( a taste, a s ound, a smell , a phys ical
p o sture) matches a virtual image stored somewhere in our virtual
past. It is, therefore, to this p art of the virtual p a s t (which B ergson
the futu re and which swells as it adva n c es. And as the past grows
without ceasin g so there is no limit to its preservatio n . Memory . . . is
itself, a utomatically.5
For B ergs o n , then, the past i s pres erved virtu ally, constantly
being added to as each moment in time creates a new 'image' t o be
added t o the s to re o f the p a s t , or rememb ered , ' automati c a lly' .
More over, the weight of the virtual past is constantly p u s hing
time onward into the present, e a ch new image that is added to
the p ast, building up the momentum that enables time to ' gn aw'
Movement-image
In Cinema 1 , Deleuze argue d that c ertain typ es of films existed
that could be classified as movement images. He identified several
different types of movement image, from France, the Soviet Union
and Germany, but the most typical was the action image of the
cla s s i c al Hollywo o d film. I focus on thi s type of movement image
from now on, as it p rovides the clearest example of Deleuze's i deas .
Time-image
In contrast to the movement image, Deleuze offers the time image.
He argues that certain film s , especially several that emerged from
western Europe after Worl d War II, p rovide evi dence that our
conception of time is changing. In the films of art cinema directors
of the 1 9 6 0 s and 1 97 0 s such as Alain R e s n a i s and Jean Luc
G o dard from Fra n c e , o r Federi c o Fellini and Michelangelo
Antonioni from Italy D eleuze detects a new a n d diffe rent
c o nception of time.
In the time image, the p a s s ing o f time i s depicted in its own
right. It provides a direct image of time. At the most extreme l evel,
we could consider a film such as Andy Warhol's Empire ( 1 9 64) ,
which depicts the E mpire State Building in a static shot over the
c o urse of eight hours . Here the action is not condensed in any way,
a n d the p atient viewer is able to exp erience the p a s s ing of time ,
we only ever know the one p athway that we live, the one that
solidifi e s and b ecomes actual around us. An infinite numb er of
splits . Here the definitive exampl e i s Alain Resnais 's Last Year at
Marienbad ( 1 9 6 1 ) , a film that repl ays a meeting b e tween a man
and a woman that takes p l a c e during a dinner p a rty.' Vari o u s
contemp orary films c an also b e viewed i n this way, including the
German hit Run Lola Run ( 1 998). Run Lola Run rep l ays the s ame
story three times (that of its protagoni st's desperate attem p t to
obtain DM l O O . OO in twenty minutes flat in order to s ave her
boyfriend's life ) , each time with a different conclusion. In this
sense it p erfectly exp resses the notion that the s ame event takes
place an infinite number of times in infinite parallel univers e s . In
Deleuze's words, it evokes the ' simultaneity of presents in different
worl d s ' that exi st if we conceive of time as a virtual labyrinth . '
I n the time image w e encounter a fundamental confusion over
the truth. Take the flashback, for instance. In the movement image,
flashbacks often appear in order to provide an answer as t o why
events in the present are taking shape in certain ways . It i s not
uncommon fo r this typ e of fl ashb ack to b e u s e d to reve a l a
Hybrid-images
Deleuze's categoris ation of images poses one imp ortant question:
exactly why are some films movement imag e s , and some time
image s ? At the b e ginning of Cinema 2 Deleuze mentions World
War II as a dividing line b etween the ' classical' conception of time
found in the movement image and the 'modern' vision of time of
the time imag e . H e d o e s not elab orate on why World War II
marked this break in any great detail, however. At this stage,
then, let us briefly consider some of the p o s sible re asons for the
emergen ce of time images and movement images at different
time s in the last c entury.
At an industrial level. the reason for this division appears fairly
clear. The rules for continuity e diting created and refined by the
Hollywoo d studio system in the early decades of the twentieth
century were designed to ensure complete clarity of narrative
for the vi ewer. For this re a s o n , the movement image b e c a m e
dominant, as t h e 'reality' of time's p a s s ing w a s sub ordinated to
the telling of the story. On the other hand, since the end of World
vari ety of way s . In the aftermath of Wo rld War II, then, the
emergence of time images in the art cinemas of E urop e an
countries such as Italy and France can be interpreted as attempts
to create a different typ e of narrative fro m the H o l lywo o d
movement image. This i s certainly one rea s on why t h e time
image was b o rn .
A n indus trial dimension is never enough on its own, h owever.
Like all films , movement and time images can be interpreted in
any number of other ways . Wh at about their content? Deleuze
notes that post war Europe was marked by a proliferation of what
he calls the ' any spac e whatever', spaces where people no longer
knew how to react to their situation.' Although he never s aid so
particul arly directly, Deleuze s aw the effect of the war on Europe
reflected in the inability of pro tagonists of the time image to
influence their situation positively. By contrast, the cinema of
the now triumphant sup erp ower the United States had no s u ch
problem; hence the Hollywo o d movement image was popul ated
by individualistic hero e s who had no difficulty reacting t o their
circumstance s . We are now getting closer to understanding why
time images and movement images appeared where and when
they did. Put in simplistic term s , many Europ ean countri e s were
damaged by the war, not only economically and physically, but
al so p s ychological ly. The primacy of the c o l onialist c entral
European nations on the global stage was suddenly supers e de d
by the emergence o f two sup erp owers (the S oviet Union a n d the
United State s ) in the ens uing Cold War. Time images emerged in
these nations as they lo oked back into their pasts, questioning the
truth of their identities a s they b egan to rebuild after the war.
Why, then, are there s o many hybrid images now? Why are
there s o many films that contain asp ects of b oth movement image
and time image? Again, the most obvious place to look is the
marketp l a c e . With an incre a singly glob al m arket to aim at,
national film industries , film studios and independent filmmakers
know that films that can cro s s over b etween mainstream and
niche markets (such as the art cinema distribution network) can
make a gre a t deal of p rofit. S ome high p rofile examples of this
approach include Groundhog Day ( 1 9 9 3 ) , Pulp Fiction ( 1 994) ,
Sliding Doors ( I 9 9 7 ) , Run Lola Run ( 1 9 9 8 ) , Being John Malkovich
( 1 999) , Mem ento (2000) , Irreversible (200 2 ) , Eternal Sunshine of the
Sp o tless Mi n d ( 2 004) and 50 First D ates ( 2 0 04) . All the s e films
contain the basic elements of the movement image, but have also
incorporated aspects of the time image (most usually in the form
of a rep eated, jumb l e d or otherwi s e disrupted narrative time
s cheme) , therefore guaranteeing maximum market appeal. They
use clearly defined genres and recogni sable stars to appeal to
mass markets, but also exp eriment with narrative time in o rder
also to appeal to a more ' intellectual' art cinema crowd.
Once again, however, there is more to this than money, a s at
least two critics have noted. Patricia Pisters ' The Matrix of Visual
Culture ( 2 0 0 3 ) examines films with characteristics of both time
and movement image as expressions of a new age, where ' a new
camera c o n s c i o u s n e s s makes clear dis tincti on b etween the
subj ective and the objective imp o s sible; [andl the past and the
present, the virtual and the actual have become indistinguishable' ."
For Pisters , thes e hyb rid films are evi dence of a broader historical
shift. As c ontemporary popular culture becomes increasingly
image oriente d , even Madonna's music videos (Pisters analyses
Don 't Tell Me) b egin to represent what Deleuze called ' the crystal of
time' , the indi s tinguishable existence of time as both virtual and
actual image s . '
David Martin-Jones takes a slightly different tack i n Deleuze,
Cinema and National Identity ( 2 006) , interpreting films such as
Sliding Doors, Run Lola R u n , Memento and Eternal Sunshine
of the Spo tless Mind a s expre s s i o n s of national i dentity. For
Martin Jones , the fractured temporal narratives of these films
visualise recent disruptions to the narrative of national identity,
a process that the films then attemp t to work through to find the
most p rofitable trajectory available to both the film's narrative and
that of national identity.
For the remainder of this chapter I examine one hyb rid
film, The Cell ( 2 000) , which p rovi des evi dence of all three of
the above r e a sons behind the prol iferation of the new hyb rid
image. The s e are seen in its use of movement and time image to
appeal to l arger markets , its acknowl edgement of a new era of
' c amera consciousn e s s ' in which actual and virtual become
indis tinguishable, and its subtle examinati on of the effect of
this new era on questions of national identity.
3. The Cell
(2000) ,
troubled chil d . It soon transpires that D e ane's body is actu ally
wrapp e d in a s exy, space age, red rubber virtual reality suit with a
' neurol ogical syn aptic transfer system' face veil, and suspended
fro m h ooks in the ceiling in a laboratory alongside the comato s e
b o dy of the b oy. Through unspecified high techery the neurological
synaptic transfer system enables her to tune into the mind of
another. Her cons ciousness is thereby able to travel into the b oy's
mind. When the s tory of the FBI hunt for a disturbed s erial killer
C arl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D ' Onofrio) is introduced it is only
a m atter of time before Deane is hooked up to the mind of the
killer, exploring his mind for clues a s to where his final victim is
b eing held. S targher is a schiz ophrenic who was violently abused
by his father when a chil d, an d who has consequently devel oped
into a pathological killer. H e ki dnaps women, drowns them,
b l e aches them to look like doll s , and then susp ends himself over
their corpses by metal chains attached to hooks in his fl e s h in
order to derive auto erotic p l e asure . When the FBI catch him,
h owever, he has already slipped into a coma, and the only w ay of
s aving the final girl he has kidnap p e d is for D eane to enter his
deranged mind.
Throughout The Cell there i s a clear distinction drawn b etween
the p hysical worl d , which is conventi onally ren dered as a
movement image, and the mental world, which follows the unusual
logic of the time image. Like any Hollywood thriller it has a clearly
define d dea dline (in this instance, the need to save the trapped
girl before she drown s ) , it fo cus e s on the actions of its active
mas culine protagonists especially the bodies of well trained
FBI agents breaking down doors, examining crime scenes, driving
cars, and flying in p lanes and helic opters and the editing is
conventional in its manipulation of time to suit the bodies of
thes e men as they rush to meet their deadline. On the other hand,
the film also contains numerous aspects of the time image. D eane
and her p atients are physically suspended so that they cannot act,
allowing D eane to travel virtually within the minds of others . On
entering the mind the editing suddenly becomes discontinuo u s ,
a s a range of biz arre lands capes are introduced to repres ent the
o
workings of the mind. Here we have obviously moved from E
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movement image to time image. In this respect, The Cell illustrates '0
the way in which the movement and time image typically interact .S:
'"
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in contemp orary cinem a . Although both typ es of image appear in Cl
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the s ame film, the time image is used to explore the inside of the E
mind , while the movement image is equated with the activity of �
1i
the b o dy. Other examples of this type of hybrid include The Matrix �
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( 1 99 9 ) , Bei ng John Malkovich , Mulholland Dr. (200 1 ) , Identity c
o
(2003) ' Gothika (2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and '"
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The Jacket (2005) . o
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In terms of its market o rientation, the film could be des crib ed
.�
as an MTV inspired Silence of the Lambs ( 1 99 1 ) . It takes the serial �
killer genre into new territory by employing the time image in a ii
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manner that is similar to the MTV music video . Once inside the o
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mind of the serial killer the imagery becomes all important, as we
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are given clues to the p sychological rea sons for the killer's actions E
through dis turbing tableaux: of a horse standing in a room that �
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is suddenly di s sected by a falling glass cage; various imprisoned :E
imprisoned girl, and (after she allows Stargher to visit her in her
mind) when Deane cures the little boy Stargher in a baptism ritual
the mons trous adult side dies for ever. Rather than the p otentia l
for endless change offered by the virtual c oexistence of child and
man in duration envisioned by B ergson, Proust, Deleuze , Ruiz (etc.)
in the time image, The Cell reterritorialis e s time into a straight
line by pos iting a p sycho analytic a l origin for the killer's pres ent
s tate in the p a s t . By helping the b oy, D e ane effectively realigns
and destroys any confusion b etween c o existing p ast and pres ent
(child and manl . and any further potential for change .
Chapter 6
T i m e (a nd) travel
i n televis i o n
Damian Sutton
they exp l o r e .
Doctor Who 's body without organs
C onsi der w h a t it means to o rgani s e our time . We create organs
out of elements of our lives, like organs in a bo dy, which work and
function together. For instance: we make a list of things to do this
day, giving it a logical and reward ing internal structure. This relies
playb ack that a p pears to b e 'live ' . What should happen i s that
circular logic, yet what has happened is that the limits that we set
on our organi s e d time have been broken. A d i s tinct s en s e o f the
p a s t (the video m e s s age) exi s t s , but b e c omes indistinguishable
from the present, which i s the future of the Doctor from a p o s ition
smo oth transiti o n from p a s t to pres ent and b ack again. All the
aspects of time p ast, present and future are revealed as one time:
identity. Famously, Deleuze and Guattari 's task, spread acro s s the
mammoth two volume work of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, is
to p rovide an alternative, dynamic way of understanding identity
that resists the rigi d Oedipal structure of p sychoan alysi s . Where
psycho analysis begins with the binary linear relationship of child
and p arent, D eleuze and Guattari uncover a third p osition th e
BwO that exists in triangulation. This is the b o dy that will
b e c o m e i d entity, waiting to b e created a s a b o dy over time,
coagul ating and shifting only a s a kind of inevitable ' glacial
reality ' : ' You will b e organized, you will b e an organism, you will
articulate your body . . . " The subject i s forme d over time, and the
impression of s elf a s fixed (as one's true s elf, for instance) i s in
fact a misunderstanding of the way that the subject exi sts and
changes in an awes omely slow path through time.
and can even buy the value of others ' labour: ' C apital is indeed the
b o dy without organs of the c apitalist, or rather of the capitalist
b eing . " As we found earlier, the economic philosophers Hardt
and N e g ri h ave l i nke d the smo othing effe c t of c a p ital to the
age in order to use her brain a s the station's central computer. The
story is fantasti c , and held together by the D octor and Reinette a s
4. Doctor
Who (2007).
Doctor Who 's a dventures in the development and evoluti on of
humanity provide a rich example of a television show playing with,
if not actually doing, phil o s ophy. Many of the stories, for instance,
illustrate the varying organis ations of the BwO that Deleuze and
Guattari outline, the ' doubl e s ' that the n a scent BwO might turn
the eradication of the impure and the has tening of their own
evoluti o n . Other a dventures in Doctor Who i l l u s trate similarly
c ancerous s o cial b o dies , such as the C yb ermen, who similarly
crave a kind of purity through an absurd renewal of the b o dy. At
we try to make sense of the time that will come and the time we
have been through. The instant is a kind of pure subjectivity called
affection, often misunderst o o d as p ercep tion." Affection divi des
i n d i c ations of memory, often with the simp l est indic ation that
the a ction is off the island. O therwise, many epi s o des start with a
character lo oking directly in the air, although this may or may not
b e in that character's past. Nonetheles s , when watching television
shows such as Lost, as with our own memories , we immediately get
than recompo sing the p a s t : 'We place ours elves at once in the
element of sense, then in a region of this element . ' l l So memory
i s , in a s ense, like getting l o s t in an unfamiliar forest, as so many
of Lost's characters do. At first we s e n s e s imple difference a
different place b efore getting our bearings as we receive more
their memories , and gradually get our b earings . This is especi ally
the c a s e with the chara cter of L o cke ( Terry O ' Quinn) , who s e
rotation upon its elf, by which it turns toward the s ituation of the
moment, pres enting to it that side of its elf which may prove to b e
the most useful . ' " Memory therefore app ears t o act i n the manner
the machine picks the record, turns it over s o the correct side
faces u s , and p l ays us what we want to hear. Indeed, the research
station that the survivors find in season two of Lost has an o l d
record player, who se accomp anying collection o f records from the
1 960s and 1 970s suggests that the station is long abandoned. Jus t
like B ergson a n d Deleuze's jukebox memory, however, this record
player i s a red herring: the station has been manned throughout
the intervening period, with new pers onnel arriving within the
l ast few years . We need to remember the sp atial description of
memory. We get lost ( a p p e al ) , but b egin to understand our
surroundings (translation, contraction) and cho o s e which way to
explore (rotation/orientation) . It is we who orient ourselves toward
t:
memory, within memory, not the other way around. o
'ii
The characters ' memories therefore mark out their time on the .�
island, and the only clock available is a countdown mechanism set 1!
.5
at the o d d interval of 108 minutes, which requires res etting by
�
>
entering a code into a computer in the research station. For Locke , o
.:
Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) and Mr Eko, the choice to p ress the -.
1)
t:
button is one that arises from their memories, which inform their o
..
do not so much create new trauma for him as remind him how to do
it taking him through the same choices, the s ame personal p ains ,
the same urgency that he faces in the present: to extract information
through violence in order to save other lives. It is from memory that
he perceives the opportunity and necessity to carry it out, however.
The example of Sun and Jin simil arly demons trates that the
usefulness of memory is based on present action, rather than
objective truth , and, as viewers , we are asked to as sume that their
memories are not complicated by illne s s , for example, as Hurley's
are . Nevertheles s , the show's relatively flat depiction of flashback
leads us to assume a presupposed subjective truth, which is affect.
In watching Lost it is not necess arily important to know th at we
are seeing the whole past, but simply that we understand why
the se characters are searching for these memories in the fores t .
Conclusion : Reframing D eleuze
create artworks that last the test of time. These practices make use
of b e coming itself, the insis tent change that offers the p ot enti al
for p olitical change , for examp l e , in playing film l angu a g e in a
minor key, subtly affecting and reforming it from within. The key
change and are a p art of change. The greatest valu e in Deleuze 's
phil o s ophy is that it provides us with analytical and conceptual
the new social, political and arti stic situations that occur. We have
truly monumental .
D eleuze's is a pro ductive phil o s ophy, and to b e truly creative
Foreword
Ian Buchanan, Intro duction to A Deleuzian Century?, special issue,
South Atlantic Q uarterly, vol. 96, no. 3 ( 1 997 ) , 389.
2 Gi l le s Deleuze and Felix Gu attari , What Is Philosop hy?, tran s .
Graham B urchell a n d H u g h Tom l i n s o n (New York, NY: C o lumb i a
University Pres s , 1 994) .
3 John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections ( C ambri dge, MA: MIT
Pre s s , 2000). 1 1 5 .
4 Ibid.
Cha pter 1
Chapter 2
1 Deleuze and Guattari , A Thousand Plateaus, 2 7 0 .
2 Deleuze and Gu attari , Wh a t Is Philosophy?, 5 9 .
3 Ibid.
4 Gisle Hannemyr, 'The Internet as Hyp erb o l e : A critical examination of
adoption rate s ' , The Information Society, vol . 1 9 (2003). 1 1 4-- 1 5 .
5 Arturo E scob ar, 'Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the anthropology of
cyb erculture', Current A n thropology, vol . 3 5 , no. 3 ( 1 9 94). 2 1 4 .
!
o
6 Tim Jordan, 'Language and Libertarianism: The p olitics o f cyberculture
z
and the culture of cyberpolitic s ' , Sociological Review, vol . 49, n o . 1
(200 1 ) , 9.
7 Hans Magnus Enzensb erger, ' C onstituents of a Theory of the Media
( 1 9 7 0) ' , in Raids and R econstructions (London: Pluto Pres s , 1 9 7 6 ) .
2 0 53 , 2 2 .
8 Ibi d . , 34-5 .
9 Louis Althu s s e r, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatu s e s (Notes
towards an Inves tig ation) ( 1 9 6 9) ' , in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. B en
Brews ter (London: New Left Books, 1 9 7 1 1 . 1 2 7 88, 1 4 6 .
1 0 Enzensberger, ' C onstituents of a Theory o f t h e Media' , 3 2 .
11 Charlie Brooker, TV Go Home, 1 4 July 2000, www.tvgohom e . com/
1 40 7 2000.html (accessed 2 0 / 1 0/2006 ) .
12 Enzensb erger, ' C onstituents of a Theory o f t h e Media' , 3 7 .
13 .http: //www.whoislupo. com/ almost an object lesson i n how n o t to
do thi s ' , Need to Know, 16 N ovember 2 00 1 , ww.ntk. net/200 1 l 1 1 1 l 6
(accessed 2011 0/200 6 ) .
14 McKenzie Wark, 'Information Wants to be Free ( B u t is Everywhere i n
Chains)" Cultural Studies, vol. 20, nos 2 3 (2006) , 1 6 5 83, 1 7 2 .
15 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire ( C ambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2 00 1 ) , 3 26 7 .
16 E i l een R. Meehan, "'H o ly C ommodity Feti sh, B a tman ! " : The p o litical
economy of a commercial intertext' , in Rob erta Pearson and William
Uricchi o , The Many Lives of the Batman (eds), (London: Routledge/
British Film Institute , 1 9 9 1 ) , 47 6 5 , 54.
Pa rt Two: Introduction
Gilles Deleuze, T h e Fold: Leibniz and t h e baroque, trans. Tom C onley
(London: Athlone, 1 99 3 ) , 1 9 .
2 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 232 309.
3 Ibi d . , 2 3 6 .
4 R o s i B r a i d o tti, Patterns of Dissona nce: A s t u dy of wo men in
contemporary philosophy, trans. Elizabeth Guild (London: Polity Pres s ,
1 99 1 ) . 1 2 1 .
5 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 24 l .
6 Ibi d . , 2 5 3 .
7 Ib i d . , 2 5 7 .
Cha pter 3
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a minor literat ure
(Minneapoli s , MN: University of Minnesota Pre s s , 1 9 8 6 ) , 1 6 .
2 Ibid., 24 5 .
3 Deleuze and Guattari , A Tho usand Plateaus, 1 04 .
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 2 1 8 .
7 Ibid., 2 1 5 24.
8 Ib i d . , 2 1 7 .
9 Ib i d . , 2 1 5 1 6 .
10 Deleuze a n d Guattari, Kafka, 1 7 .
11 D . N. Rodowick, Gilles Deleuz e 's Ti m e Mach in e (Durham, N C : Duke
University Pres s , 1 9 9 7 ) . 1 53 .
12 Ibi d . , 1 6 2 9 .
13 Mette Hjort, Small Nation: Global cinema (Minne apolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Pres s , 2005); D avid Martin Jon e s , ' O rphans, a Work of
Minor C inema from Post devolutionary Scotland ' , Jo urnal of British
Cinema and Television, vol. 1 , no. 2 ( 2 004) . 2 2 6 4 1 ; B i l l Marshall,
Q uebec National Cinema (Montreal: McGill Queen's University Pre s s ,
200 1 ) ; H a m i d Naficy, A n A ccented Cinema : Exilic a n d diasporic
filmmaking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Pre s s , 200 1 ) ; Laura U.
Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural cin ema, embodiment and
the senses (Durham, N C : Duke University Press, 2000); Meaghan Mo rris ,
Too Soon Too Late: History in popular culture (B loomington : Indi a n a
University Press, 1998); Alison Butler, Women 's Cinema: The contested
screen (London: Wallflower, 200 2 ) ; Belen Vidal, 'Playing in a Minor Key',
in Books in Motion: Adaptation, intertextuality, authorship, ed. Mireia
Aragay (Amsterdam: Rodolphi, 2005) .
14 Geoff King, American Independent Cinema (London: I.E. Tauri s , 2005),
2 22 49; Glyn Davi s , ' C amp and Queer and the New Queer Director:
C as e study Gregg Araki ' , in New Q ueer Cinema: A Critical Reader,
e d . Michele Aaron (E dinburgh: E dinburgh Univers i ty Pres s , 2 0 0 4 ) ,
53 6 7 .
15 King, A merican Independent Cinema, 8 3 , 23 5 6; Katie Mills,
' R evitalizing the R o a d Movi e ' , in
The R o a d Movie Book, e d . Steven
C ohan and Ina Rae Hark (London: Routledge, 1 99 7 ) , 308 13; James M.
Moran, ' Gregg Araki: Guerrilla film maker for a queer generation', Film
Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1 (19 9 6 ) , 1 8 26 , 1 9 2 0; Kylo Patrick R. H a rt,
"'Auteur/Bricoleur/Provocateur": Gregg Araki and postpunk style in the
Doom Generation', Journal ofFilm and Video, vol. 55, no. 1 (2003) 3 0 8,
3 3 ; and Chris Chang , 'Ab sorbing Alternative' , Film Comment, vo l . 3,
n o . 5 . 47 53 , 5 3 .
16 F o r a fu ll d i s c u s s i o n of thi s s e quen c e , see Kaja Si lverm a n , Male
Subjectivities at the Margins (London: Routledge, 19 92) , 90 1 06 .
II
17 S . F . S a i d , ' C l o s e Encounters ' , Sight and Sound, vol. 1 5, no. 6 (2005), 3 2 .
�
Z
Cha pter 4 ..,
..,
1 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 1 7 2 .
2 Gregg Lamb ert, The Non philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (Lo n d o n :
C ontinuum, 2002) , 152 .
3 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 2 9 1 .
4 Kobena Mercer, 'Imaging the Black Man's S ex', in PhotographylPolitics
1tvo, ed. Patricia Holland, Simon Watney and Jo Spence (London:
C omedia, 1 9 8 6 ) , 6 1 .
5 Richard Meyer, 'The Jes s e Helms Theory of Art' , October, no. 1 04
(200 3 ) , 13 1 -48 , Steven C. Dubin, Arresting Images: Impolitic art and
uncivil action (London: Routledge, 1 9 9 2 ) .
6 Meyer, 'The Jesse Helms Theory of Art' , 1 4 2 .
7 Dubin, Arresting Images, 187
8 Ib i d . , 1 8 8.
9 Mercer, 'Imaging the B lack Man's Sex ' , 6 3 .
10 Ib i d .
11 D eleuze a n d Guattari , A Thousand Plateaus, 2 9 1 .
12 Ib i d .
13 Juha Pekka Vanhatalo , 'Coco Fusco Life under Surveillance ' , Kiasma
Magazine, no. 12 (200 1 ) , ww.kiasma.fi/index.php?id= I 7 2&FL= I &L= 1
(accessed 2 3 /0 1 /2007) .
14 Del euze and Guattari , What Is Philosophy?, 1 9 l .
15 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 300.
16 Del euze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 1 8 2 .
17 Ib i d . , 1 6 9 .
18 Ibi d . , 193.
19 Nicholas B o urriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Paris: Les pres s e s d u reel,
200 2 ) , 14.
20 Ibi d . , 1 9 .
21 Ibi d . , 2 0 .
22 Ibi d. , 4 l .
23 Jacques Ranciere , The Politics of Aesthetics: The distribution of the
sensible, tran s . Gabriel Rockhill (London: C ontinuum, 2004) , 1 3 .
24 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 1 76.
Cha pter 5
Andre B azin, What is Cinem a ?, vol. II, trans. Hugh Gray, 2nd e dn
(Berkeley, C A : University of California Press, 1 9 7 1 ) , 76 7; David Bordwell
and Kristin Thompson, Film History: An introduction, 2nd edn (Boston,
MA: Mc Graw Hill , 2003), 364.
2 Deleuze, Cinema 2, l .
3 D eleuze, Cinema 2, 1 3 1 ; B org es, 'The Garden of Forking Path s ' , 44 54.
4 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 1 0 1 ; Ro dowick, Gilles Deleuze 's Time Machine,
1 00 8 .
5 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 1 03 .
6 Anna Powell, Deleuze a n d Horror Film (E dinburgh: E dinburgh
University Pres s , 2005) .
7 Deleuze, Cinema 2, xi.
S Patricia Pisters , The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze
in film th eory ( S tanfo r d , CA: Stanford Un ive rs i ty Pres s , 2003) 43-4.
9 Ibi d . , 3 4. For a detailed exp l anation of the c rystal of time s e e ,
Deleuze, Cinema 2, 6S 9 7 .
10 Pisters , The Matrix of Visual Culture, 44.
11 For a greater discussion of Spellbound and several other famous dream
s e quenc e s , s e e Deleuze , Cinema 2, 57 S.
lZ Deleuze, Cinema 2, 92.
Cha pter 6
Michael Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: An apprenticeship in philosophy
(Minneapolis , University of Minnesota Press, 1 99 3 ) .
2 A later p art of the convers ation rep eats : Sally: 'Let me get my head
round this: you're reading aloud from a transcript of a conversation
you're still having?' The Do ctor: 'Uh . . . wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . :
3 Deleuze and G uattari , Anti Oedipus, 1 0 .
4 Dele.uze and Guattari , A Thousand Plateaus, 1 59 .
5 Ibid.
6 Hardt and Negri , Empire, 3 2 7 .
7 Deleuze and Guattari , A Thousand Plateaus, 1 65 .
8 Bergson, Matter and Memory, 5 8 .
'"
9 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism ( 1 966), tran s . Hugh Tomlinson and B arb ara <D
Habb erjam (New York, NY: Zone, 1 99 7 ) , 5 Z . 15
z
10 Ibi d . , 5 3 . ."
..,
11 Ibi d . , 5 7 .
lZ Ibi d . , 6 3 .
13 Bergson, Matter and Memory, 1 68 9.
S elect bibliography
By Gilles Deleuze
Empiricism and Subjectivity: An essay on Hume's theory of human nature,
1 953, trans. Constantin V. B oundas New York, NY: Columbia University
Pres s , 1 9 9 1 .
Nietzsche a n d Philosophy, 1 9 6 2 , tra n s . Hugh Tomlinson, London:
Athlone, 1 9 83,
Kan t 's Critical Philosophy: The doctrine of the faculties, 1 963, trans. Hugh
Tomlinson and Barbara Habb erjam, London: Athlone, 1 9 9 5 ,
Proust and Signs, 1 964, trans. Richard Howard, New York, NY: Braziller, 1 972.
Bergsonism, 1 9 66, trans . Hugh Tomlinson and B a rbara Habb erjam, New
York, NY: Zone, 1 9 9 7 .
Difference and Repetition, 1 9 6 8 , tran s , Paul Patton , 2 n d e dn, London:
Athlone, 1 9 9 7 ,
The Logic of Sense, 1 9 6 9 , trans , Mark L e s t e r a n d C harles Stivale, London:
Athlone, 1 9 90,
Expression i n Philosophy: Spinoza, 1 9 7 0 , trans . Martin Joughin, 2nd edn,
New York, NY: Zone, 1 9 9 2 .
Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation, 1 98 1 , trans . Daniel W. Smith, London :
C ontinuum, 2005,
Cinema 1: The movement image, 1 9 8 3 , trans . Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam, 2nd edn, London: Athlone, 1 9 9 7 .
Cinema 2: The time image, 1 9 8 5 , tran s , Hugh Tomlinson a n d Robert
G aleta, 2nd edn, London: Athlone, 1 994.
Foucault, 1 9 8 6 , trans , Sean Hand, London: Athlone 1 98 8 , ,
The Fold: Leibniz and the baroque, 1 9 8 8 , tran s . Tom C o nley, London:
Athlone, 1 993,
Essays Critical and Clinical, 1 9 9 3 , trans . Daniel W. Smith and Michael A.
Greco, Minneapol i s , MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1 9 9 7 .
See a lso
Dialogues (with C l aire Parnet) , 1 9 7 7 , tran s . Hugh Tomlinson and B arb ara
H abb erj am, London: Athlone, 1 9 8 7 .
The Deleuze Reader, 1 9 9 3 , e d . C o n s tantin V. B o u n d a s , New York, NY:
C olumbia University Pre s s , 1 9 9 3 .
Neg o t iations, 1 9 72 90, 1 9 9 5 , tran s . Martin Jo ughin, New York, NY:
C olumbia University Pres s , 1 9 9 5 .
Pure Immanence: Essays on a life, e d . John Rajchman, tran s . Anne Boyman,
N ew York, NY: Zone, 200 1 .
By Deleuze a n d Guattari
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, 1 97 2 , trans . Robert Hurley,
Mark S e em, and Helen R. Lane, London: Athlone, 1 984.
Kafka: Toward a minor literature, 1 9 7 5 , trans . Dana Polan, Minne apolis,
"CI
Q)
MN: Universi ty o f Minnesota Pres s , 1 98 6 .
E
E A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, 1 980, trans . B rian
Qi
c: Massumi , 3rd edn, London: Athlone, 1 9 96.
(\)
N Nom adology: The war machine, 1 9 86, trans . Brian Mas sumi, New York,
�
Q) NY: S emiotext(E ) , 1 9 8 6 .
Qi
Q Wha t Is Philosophy?, 1 9 94, trans . Graham Burchell a n d Hugh Tomlinson,
co
.., New York, NY: C olumbia University Pres s , 1 9 94 .
and our discussion, and evidence of how we have worked with Deleuzian
concepts . Some of the ideas took Deleuze many years to develop, and many
philo sophy and visual c ulture. These definiti on s , then , repre sent our
as we understand what we feel and act upon it. Since these feelings
overl ap, we l ive in affection and create a gap, or cerebral interval, when
affects The pure resp onse to an artwork that is articulated through the
becoming The ongoing process whereby the world is always coming into
or returns to, the state of animal in order to achieve further self awarenes s .
language and culture of the majority. Minor cinemas, for example, explore
i d entities problemati s e d by society (e.g. queer cinema) through the use and
BwO is organised and filled by the desire in order to create structure, but
produce movement and growth, especially where this involves the survival
inters ection of form, subject, organ and function. Thi s inters ection is the
plane of immanence, which is given shape in objects and their organis ation .
i m a g e both relies upon and enforces t h e chronolo gical image of time and
obj ectile An identity that exists in time, rather than in space, and whi ch
of m a teri a l s into language and exp r e s s i on. Tog ether with affe cts t h ey
or trauma.
forms to pro duce stable embodiments or static identities. This might also
s o c i al form ation s .
rhizome A plant stem that grows horizontally, such as a tuber. The term
is also u s e d by Deleuze and Guattari to refer to rootless p l ants that spread
hori zonta lly rather than setting in deeply such as couch grass. Something
arborescent or tree like. Something that exhibits in its information the same
character traits, and which makes use of the uncons cious as repre s s e d
memori e s a n d desire s .
kind of geology. Not only do strata add layer upon layer of meaning to our
only if they appear different, and so strata refers as much to the difference
as to the l ayers .
time image The glimpse of duration that o c curs when the logic of the
address to c ame ra) or by the use of rep etition, reflection, metaphor and
other poetic devices . Hi stori c ally, the time i mage i s a pro duct o f cinema s
hybrid images and dis turbing the politic a l p ower of the time image.
Index